Category Archives: sadness

All Hands, Bury the Dead

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So this slow-motion funeral happened this week:

Official caption: “Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam residents watch as the decommissioned amphibious assault ship ex-USS Tarawa (LHA 1), is escorted out of Pearl Harbor by the Safeguard-class rescue and salvage ship USNS Grasp (T-ARS 51) during Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2024, July 16.”

(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Courtney Strahan)

Laid up in Pearl’s Middle Loch since she retired in 2009 after 33 years of hard service, plans fell through to turn Tarawa into the first Navy amphibious ship museum once she was removed from a Category B reserve asset, and she was stricken from the Naval List earlier this year.

Of course, the old Tarawa is only participating in RIMPAC as a target ship for the big upcoming general SINKEX, which for many of the countries taking part is an extremely rare event.

It is rarer still to have a weapons-free bite at something the size of the mighty cold warrior Tarawa.

I mean, it’s not often that a 40,000-ton aircraft carrier-sized warship is expended in a gunnery drill. It has only happened before in the still largely classified USS America (CV-66) tests in 2005– which was used to engineer resiliency in every U.S. flattop ever since– and in Tarawa’s sistership USS Belleau Wood’s sinking in 2006.

It is a bit sad, honestly, as Tarawa, laid down on 15 November 1971 at Pascagoula, was the first big-deck ‘phib that combined the dock of an LPD with the helicopter capability of an LPH and supersized it into a ship that is the same size as a WWII Essex-class fleet carrier.

Artist’s conception of a very preliminary design of the LHA, released by DoD, 15 February 1967. USN 1120262

USS Tarawa as commissioned, with bow 5-inch MK45 guns, which were later removed. At the time she was constructed, she was the largest ship that Ingalls had built. 

Since Tarawa, the Navy built (and retired) four of her sisters, followed by eight updated Wasp-class LHDs, and are now planning 11 America-class LHAs which all show the same lineage.

So Long, Bob

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A big part of my life as a kid was watching Bob Newhart and, looking back, developing my own, slightly deadpan, sense of humor largely from those hours of steady Bob-isms.

Drafted into the Army during the tail-end of the Korean War, 5′ 8″ Bob had a business management degree from Loyola under his belt so spent most of his two-year stint in OD Green as an enlisted clerk. This made his first film, Hell is for Heroes, so perfect. At the time doing stand-up comedy in nightclubs around Hollywood and just a few years out of the service, Newhart portrayed a hapless Army clerk who stumbled into the high-action combat and provided comedic relief.

Bob as PFC Driscoll in Hell is for Heroes. SGT Newhart had just left the Army seven years prior

While he didn’t do many other war films, his portrayal of Major Major Major in 1970’s Catch-22 is classic.

And any bubblehead from the Cold War has probably heard his still very funny “USS Codfish” bit. 

An interesting anecdote from when I was a kid that was Bob-adjacent was when the old battlewagon USS Wisconsin was towed to Ingalls for reactivation during the Reagan/Lehman 600-ship Navy build-up, the crew unofficially named her three main 16″/50 turrets “Larry, Darryl, and Darryl” due to the then running gag on the Newhart Show, which was a big hit at the time.

I remember seeing those t-shirts all over Pascagoula for years after Wisconsin left.

Mr. Newhart, you will be missed.

Evan Wright, Gone

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Embedded with fast-moving but lightly armored Marine 1st Reconnaissance Battalion’s Bravo Company during the invasion of Iraq in 2003–typically in the lead Humvee– was a 30-year-old Rolling Stone reporter who would pen a series of articles on the experience titled “The Killer Elite” which, in 2004, received the National Magazine Award for Reporting, the top prize in magazine writing.

He then spun that up into the book and later HBO series, Generation Kill, which probably best captured the very pear-shaped pre-Fallujah American experience in Iraq during the Second Gulf War.

Of course, Wright had already been to Afghanistan, would go back to Iraq in 2007, and profile figures as diverse as Quentin Tarantino and Shakira then picked up a second National Magazine Award for his Vanity Fair profile titled “Pat Dollard’s War on Hollywood.” He also worked on Homeland and The Man in High Castle.

Hey, what is a guy with a degree in medieval history from Vassar to do, right?

Wright died by suicide on July 12, 2024, at the age of 59. 

Check-in with your friends, guys. Some are hurting and don’t know it.

32 Fighting Eagles

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Thirty-two original members of Company A, 8th Infantry Regiment “Fighting Eagles,” 4th “Ivy” Division, assembled for a group photo in Normandy. The company had hit Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, with 190 men.

By mid-July, the men shown were all who remained.

Photo via The Furious Fourth WWII Living History Association

As noted in the Combat Chronicle for the Division, “The 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Division was one of the first Allied units to hit the beaches at Normandy on D-day, 6 June 1944. Relieving the isolated 82d Airborne Division at Ste. Mere Eglise, cleared the Cotentin peninsula and took part in the capture of Cherbourg, on 25 June. After taking part in the fighting near Periers, 6-12 July, the Division broke through the left flank of the German Seventh Army, helped stem the German drive toward Avranches, and by the end of August had moved to Paris, assisting the French in the liberation of their capital.”

Troops of the 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division move off the Utah Beachhead on D-Day. U.S. Navy Photo #: SC 190062

Suffering 35,545 total casualties in 299 days of combat from D-Day to VE-Day, the 4th ID saw 252.3 percent of its authorized strength logged as killed, wounded, or missing while in the ETO.

Formed in 1838, the 8th Infantry Rgt predates the 4th ID by 79 years, and their motto is “Patriae Fidelitas” (“Loyalty to Country”). Their 1st and 2nd battalions are still active and are still part of the 4th ID, based at Fort Carson, Colorado.

Live in Baldwin County, Alabama? Have a DD-214? The Armed Forces Honor Guard Needs YOU!

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Their main duty station is the Alabama State Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Spanish Fort and since 2017, when the Armed Forces Honor Guard of Baldwin County started with just nine original members, have rendered over 1,000 military honors throughout the area.

Today, they have 22 part-time members but they are dwindling and need more willing and able volunteers to continue the mission.

Finnish forest leaves

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80 years ago, during the Finnish Continuation War against the Soviets, showing camouflaged Finnish troops outside the Karelian village of Vitele (Sotilaskasvoja Ylä-Vitele), 28 June 1944.

SA-Kuva image 154907_151418

Of note, the soldier to the left has what appears to be a Finnish-made Mosin m/39 rifle while the one on the left has a shorter m/27 or m/28 variant, with a “dog collar” sling attachment. Also, note what looks like a Finnish m/28 mess kit.

Captured during the Finnish offensive in July 1941, the Finns at the time of these photos were in the process of pulling back all along the collapsing Karelian Front as the Soviets advanced, as witnessed by what may be the same soldier in the nearby burning village of Suurmäki on 29 June.

SA-Kuva image 154968_151479

Hostilities between Finland and the Soviets ceased in early September 1944 after the Moscow Armistice guaranteed Finland’s 1940 borders sans the Barents Sea port of Petsamo and a lease on the Porkkala Peninsula. This led to a rapid recalibration in which the Finns harassed the retreating 200,000 German troops in the country– mostly the 20. Gebirgsarmee— as they retired to Norway during the so-called Lapland War which would simmer until April 1945.

Normandy at 80

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The Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, contains the graves of 9,388 war dead, and nearly another 1,557 names on the Walls of the Missing, most of whom lost their lives in the D-Day landings and ensuing operations– keep in mind that American forces suffered over 4,000 casualties on Omaha Beach alone, the bloodiest of five landing sites on 6 June 1944. The first graves were installed before the D+1 by the Army’s 607th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company.

Forty-five sets of brothers, most side by side, along with a father and his son and uncle and his nephew all rest in that hallowed ground. 

The ceremony marking the 80th D-Day commemorative begins at 6:30 EDT and will be livestreamed at the link below.

Wreck of ‘Hit em Harder’ confirmed

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One of the 52 WWII American submarines considered on Eternal Patrol, the resting place of the Gato-class fleet boat USS Harder (SS 257), which received six battle stars for her wartime service, has been confirmed.

Laid down at EB in Groton a week before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Harder was commissioned on 2 December 1942 and earned the Presidential Unit Citation through five wildly successful wartime patrols.

The recently commissioned Harder (SS-257) steaming on the surface of Narragansett Bay, 20 January 1943.

Harder, accompanied by sisters Hake (SS-256) and Haddo (SS-255) departed Fremantle on 5 August 1944 for her sixth war patrol, assigned to haunt the South China Sea off Luzon. Two weeks later the American wolf pack splashed four Japanese cargo ships while Harder and Haddo attacked and destroyed the escort ships Matsuwa and Hiburi on 22 August.

By 24 August, with the out-of-torpedo Haddo returned to base, Harder and Hake had one final joint engagement, one that Harder would not survive.

As noted by DANFS:

Before dawn on 24 August 1944, Hake sighted the escort ship CD-22 and Patrol Boat No. 102 (ex-Stewart, DD-224.)  As Hake closed to attack, the patrol boat turned away toward Dasol Bay. Hake broke off her approach, turned northward, sighting Harder’s periscope 600 to 700 yards dead ahead. Swinging southward, Hake sighted CD-22 about 2,000 yards off her port quarter. To escape, Hake went deep and rigged for silent running. At 0728 Hake’s crew reported hearing 15 rapid depth charges explode in the distance astern. Hake continued evasive action, returning to the attack area shortly after noon to sweep the area at periscope depth – only finding a ring of marker buoys covering a radius of one-half mile. Japanese records later revealed that Harder fired three torpedoes at CD-22 in a “down-the-throat” shot, which the enemy vessel successfully evaded. At 0728, she launched the first of several depth charges, which sunk the American submarine.  

The Navy declared Harder presumed lost on 2 January 1945. Her name was stricken from the Navy Register on 20 January.

She is in remarkable condition after sitting on the floor for almost 80 years, sitting upright under the crush of more than 3,000 meters of sea.

4D photogrammetry model of USS Harder (SS 257) wreck site by The Lost 52. The Lost 52 Project scanned the entire boat and stitched all the images together in a multi-dimensional model used to study and explore the site. Tim Taylor and The Lost 52 Project grants the US Navy permission to use their image for press release of the discovery of the USS Harder with photo credit given to Tim Taylor and the Lost 52 Project.

And so we remember Harder and her 80 souls. 
 
There are no roses on sailors’ graves,
Nor wreaths upon the storm-tossed waves,
No last post from the King’s band,
So far away from their native land,
No heartbroken words carved on stone,
Just shipmates’ bodies there alone,
The only tributes are the seagulls sweep,
And the teardrop when a loved one weeps.
 

(Photo: Chris Eger)

Remember to remember today

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Official caption: “Memorial Day services held at Asan Cemetery, Guam, Mariana Islands. Note a Marine standing vigilantly over the graves of his fallen comrades.”

Photographed by Photographer’s Mate Second Class William Susoeff. NARA 80-G-330028

Private William Henry Christman

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Some 160 years ago this week, all that was mortal of Private William Henry Christman, late of Pocono Lake, Pennsylvania and a recent enlistee with the 67th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment, was buried in what was then part of Arlington House, the seized former state of Col. Robert Edward Lee (USMA 1829)– a regular who had resigned his commission and had cast his lot with the Confederacy, and wife, Mary Anna Randolph Custis.

Christman, a 20-year-old farmer, enlisted in March 1864 but just two months later succumbed to rubella in a Washington, D.C. hospital on 11 May 1864, being buried in Arlington two days later, soon joined by service members who were wounded in the Wilderness and never made it back to their unit.

Today, Pvt. Christman is in Section 27, Grave 19 at Arlington National Cemetery, and the estate, purchased for $26,000 in back taxes by the federal government on 11 January 1864, is the final home of some 400,000 men and women who have been laid to rest in the cemetery’s rolling hills.

Arlington held a commemoration of Pvt. Christman’s burial, as well as the fallen from The Wilderness, this week.

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